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I sent several of my close friends Monday the following text to get their reaction: “I am boarding a plane at the height of the eclipse to reach my final destination.”

One person sent me, “Ummm…”

Another sent me a gif stating, “Godspeed.”

Another was, “Ohhhh goodness.”

One other person said, “You’re playing with fire, lol.”

Maybe I was tempting fate by sending a message worded like that. I further tempted fate by sitting on the emergency door row. As you can tell, this sounds like the beginning of an action thriller. Maybe I would be the one who gets thrown out in the movie where they die a very unfortunate yet memorable death.

The good news is that the horror and science fiction thrillers were wrong about what happens during a solar eclipse. The plane’s telemetry instruments didn’t go dark or go crazy. We didn’t suddenly lose power or anything like that. The oxygen masks didn’t fall out. And the emergency door stayed shut. 

The fact is that other than the sun being a little darker than normal, nothing happened. Or at least nothing happened beyond the normal stuff. 

The flight attendant had some jokes while delivering the safety instructions. There was some minor turbulence due to cloud cover, which obscured the eclipse from everyone in Alabama from having a clear view. And this was the first time I remember landing going east to west at the Birmingham International Airport. 

It was nearly impossible to see the eclipse from above the clouds. The sun was almost overhead. I tried to point my camera on my phone to the sun to see if I could get a few crescents. My work is seen above.

While there was a lot of tension and buildup to the eclipse, the truth is it was just a normal day with just a little bit of the sun being darkened. 

I was thankful for the lady at the airport who had some glasses to look at the eclipse, and I got a look at it from the airport window as the celestial celebration reached its climax during a break in the clouds. 

While it’s a bit of an ordinary event, it doesn’t make an eclipse any less special. I’m a bit of a space nerd anyway and a Trekkie. So, I love watching the skies. 

But just because an eclipse happens here, it doesn’t cause anything other than the moon casting a shadow on the Earth. It didn’t cause the apocalypse. It was just a fun wonder that shows how great God’s creation can be.

 

Brent Maze is the publisher of The Demopolis Times. He can be reached at brent.maze@demopolistimes.com.